Posted
by
simoniker
on Monday May 17, 2004 @03:46PM
from the spy-in-the-house-of-spam dept.

Angry_Admin writes " Spammers are now trying to find out which antispammers have infiltrated their ranks and are sharing "sensitive" info with fellow antispammers. According to the story at The Register: 'Online spammer forums like the Pro Bulk Club the Bulk Club and bulkmails.org have been gatecrashed by activists from organisations like Spamhaus. Steve Linford of Spamhaus said spammers know this already but they don't know who amongst their number is working for the other side. In theory the members-only forums of these sites is accessible only by invitation and only to individuals who have a proven track record in spamming. Apart from playing with the paranoia of spammers, the undercover investigation cast light on the latest spammer techniques.' Hopefully the spammers aren't that bright and the antispammers stick around long enough to bring them down."

Hold on, to join you must need an e-mail address. Surely that means that this is a wonderful harvesting opportunity (or even better, does it allow people to avoid being spammed if the spammers believe them to be on 'their' side).

What gets to me about spammers... They obviously feel they are doing the world a favor by offering sexual deficiency drugs, pain-killers of questionable legality and mortgages for those with bad credit.

I always picture spammers as bereft of libedo and credit, with drug abuse problems. Really, wouldn't that explain a lot?

"After a night in bulk club, everything in the real world gets the volume turned down. Nothing can piss you off. Your word is law, and if other people break that law or question you, even that doesn't piss you off."

Maybe this parody of Fight Club helps shine insight on how spammers can sleep peacefully knowing full well that millions of barbs of dislike and spite are pointed their way. What do they care? They've got the bulk club.

Dear Sir/Madam, I approach you with this offer due to the recent death of [county] Minister of Justice [name] because there is a secret bank deposit box, containing the sum of two (2) invitations to spam club. Half of these can be yours, generously. Email for details. P.S. the box also has six p3n!s enl.ar.ge.rs, five bottles of the blu* pi11 C:@l:s, and the absolute L0WEST *R*A*T*E*S for yr. m-ort-ga-ge &/\UTO W@rrn+iez.

"People selling these fresh proxies are either the virus writers themselves or someone very close to them. I don't know how ties between spammers and virus writers was first forged but there is clearly a strong link there," he added.

Followed immediately by:
"The new Microsoft Partner Programme is here."

I imagine when they review the forum postings and see "DIE YOU EVIL SPAMMING SCUM!" they just say "tsk, tsk, I don't want to see this crap in my forums... I wonder if there is software that can prevent people from sending me this crap? There should be a way to opt out of this! Why, this return e-mail is fake so I can't even complain! There should be a law!"...

They obviously feel they are doing the world a favor by offering sexual deficiency drugs, pain-killers of questionable legality and mortgages for those with bad credit.

They probably don't. They are simply making (or trying to make) a buck out of people ingenuity. I doubt they are so self deluded as to believe in a weight loss method that involves neither drugs, surgery, diet or exercise (must be magic, I guess), or similar products.

My favorite is the one where they offer to erase my bad credit history. Will they give me a new identity as well? How about a criminal record? Can they make those go away too?

Which makes me wonder, if it were a wild west situation where anything goes, and anti-spammers were allows to break the law in the same manner, would these spammers still be in business, or would there basically be a bounty on the heads of spammers.

The first thought that comes to mind is, take the source code for phatbot (it is GPL'd after all), strip out the bits about exploiting microsoft vulnerabilities, but leave in the code that exploits machines listening on the backdoors left by bagel, netsky, and mydoom, and give it a payload that shuts the machine down.

No, it's not very nice, and yes, it would piss people off. But this is the anything goes solution.

We will arm you with the knowledge to make killer sales copy so you can convert a lot of those who open your sales letter into sales today!

Oh, yEaH, sPaMmers write the best ad copy ofanybody!!!!!!!!!!

Just 5 minutes, a monkey, a pound of salt, three feet of cat-5, 1 match, a can of orange paint (oil base), a magnet, a ream of copy paper, 1 square meter of bubble wrap, a laser pointer, one spammer, and a small room. That's all I ask.

Well, yes, that did occur to me. We were pretty close to the grill, with assorted metal implements lying around; BBQ'ed spam would have made for a great addition to the food table! But he was a friend of the host, and I thought it would be rude.;)

It's because the name's at the top. When I read the name, I haven't yet been able to determine whether the comment's worth reading. After I've read the comment, then I read the sig. That's when I make the snap judgement about the poster.

All subconscious, of course. But I'm sure that's why I remember the sigs and not the names.